Codename Duchess

Modern weapons have progressed to the point where open terrain is extremely lethal. Not just to infantry but to all units. Quick detection times followed by first round accurate mission kills are highly likely. Airburst rounds and thermals mean there isn't cover where there used to be. But again infantry can now only be effectively used in dense urban and wooded terrain. Even then you will see high casualties. They are far from useless though.

I didn't watch the videos besides the opening, but this is just how infantry are in the modern battlefield. There's some things only infantry can do well (close quarters fighting) but otherwise yeah a vehicle is going to have better optics and weapons. With thermal sights everywhere infantry aren't so hidden. Plus they're extra squishy. I'd say that US Infantry are the least bad in that they generally enjoy better optics and longer range weapons. But the Russians and Ukrainians have some great firepower too. Either way, I'd say all are equally vulnerable on the battlefield. Expect much higher casualties than other games. US infantry do at least have javelins, whereas the others do not. Edit: put another way, US vehicles are awesome and can carry a lot of the weight of a fight. But that doesn't mean infantry don't have a place, or that the RUS/UKR forces wouldn't have the exact same if not worse problems.

No one is claiming 67% maintenance levels, but no one also believes 100% 100% of the time. The truth is almost certainly somewhere in between. Again, this isn't HATO stronk, Russia weak chest-thumping, it's the experience from a couple of people who have spent time around modern military equipment.

No I understand the point in the strikes, but as someone who in the next 18 months will be over those same skies dropping those same bombs, it's not exactly something to look forward to given the **** quality of ground forces as panzer outlined.

It appears as if the SAA is no more able to exploit Russian air support than the Iraqis are with US air support. Not sure why either country even bothers. CBSs 60 minutes ran a special on the air war this weekend. I'm on my phone else I'd link it, but it should be an interesting watch to those in this thread. A USAF General laments that Iraq blames insufficient strikes from the US, but points out that we have had enough strikers up continuously and have yet to say "sorry no one available." You could tell how he really appreciated those criticisms... Edit: As someone in a USN strike fighter squadron, 100% up rates never happen, ever. The sortie rate is actually pretty appropriate for a modern air force, but there's no way expeditionary maintenence is perfect. It's nothing against the RuAF, but modern jets always have something wrong with them.

Where do you think the majority of that energy will go? There will be electromagnetic emissions for sure. If a dashboard radar detector can detect an automatic door opener (like for a store) at 100 yards, then a military ELINT system will detect APS. That said I don't think it's as much of an issue as thought. Russia presumably would keep it secured until contact is immediately imminent, or operate off of JSTARS or another airborne system would detect an armored column on the move anyway. My personal experience is much more focused on airborne things than terrestrial affairs, but I have yet to see a way to hide a Battalion of tanks reliably in the digital age.

I don't see why you couldn't use an ATGM against a low helo. Early MANPADS were SACLOS guided like a TOW. The British Starstreak still is.

Joch, 100% chance it wouldn't be that easy. 100% chance it's not worth a single US casualty. The exception being actions like the SF raid that cost the life of a single US operator last week. Furthermore if it is that easy, why haven't the Iraqi or Syrian armies crushed ISIS ages ago? Their localized quantitative superiority (several orders of magnitude above your proposed forces) should easily make up for qualitative US superiority. They also should at least enjoy a whole lot more local community/cultural support seeing as, you know, that's who they are rather than strange foreigners. Remember these forces (Iraq more than SAA) are already getting help from the things the US absolutely does better than anyone else in the world: C4ISR and air support with precision guided munitions. As for your Korea analogy, stationing those same forces you propose in Israel/Jordan/Turkey for defensive purposes is much more comparable than employing them offensively in Syria. Surely you can't view Damascus and Seoul on the same level?

~25% of strike sorties actually result in strikes. Strike sorties do not count support, C4ISR, tankers, etc. Wikipedia put the number of sorties in the 40,000+ mark back in July, so add on another 10k for good measure. Pentagon reports and interviews with government officials that I have seen tend to agree with this general baseline. Note that this is diluted by time. I remember in the first month or so, there was an interview with the CAG on the Carl Vinson saying that they would take on hundreds of bombs per week to replenish stocks, and plenty of photos of Hornets coming back with empty pylons that didn't start that way. Nowadays that's the exception to your average strike mission. Back then ISIS operated a lot more in the open and enjoyed parading their tanks around. A lot of coalition strikes then were more CAS oriented defending Kurds/Iraqis/whomever. Since then, we've destroyed plenty of tanks/humvees/"hard assets" enough to the point where they are a lot smarter about hiding them and/or using them. Most strikes these days are strikes of command centers, leaders, training hubs, and things of that nature. Because of the nature of those targets, it takes a lot longer to pinpoint those coordinates to the point where we are comfortable putting a JDAM through the roof. Obviously there are exceptions (True story: an ISIS fighter tweeted a geotagged selfie from a command center. Guess what happened to that command center 6 hours later?). The problem is reliable targeting data from folks on the ground is hard to come by. We can't exactly trust 100% of the people down there, obviously, unless they are coalition personnel. And that requires a whole lot of risk and political workings to get right. So yeah, air strikes aren't super effective in terms of dismantling ISIS in their current form, but they are the best low-risk, low-reward option and the only realistic US one that the American People (and military) would like. A source:http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/may/28/john-mccain/john-mccain-says-75-airstrike-missions-against-isi/

Cluster munitions, delivered either by aircraft (likely multiple bombs) or rocket. I'm pretty sure Syria has Smerch. I can't remember if Russia brought it to Syria. But yeah, cluster bombs tend to have hundreds of submunitions each, giving you the results shown. I can't believe they're using them in an urban conflict though.

Re: too low to get hit If a guy with a video camera can track him for 10 seconds, so can a missile.

I think there isn't much coverage because this isn't exactly groundbreaking.

How do you balance the cost of a Russian EW platoon vs. an EC-130? It seems odd for an EC-130 to support a company/BN specifically. Most likely it would be doing broad work in a manner similar to the current way. I like it in theory, but I could see it causing tension in some games. Also would many people genuinely sacrifice say a jets point value worth of units for this?

Must be the caterpillar drive installed on Kazan

Ah see without the luxury of understanding the commentary, it only looks like (to me and I imagine others) that they were claiming it was a Russian missile. If they're simply commenting on the lethality of modern ATGMs then it's all well and good.

*Ahem* Right video uploaded March 7, 2011. Left video uploaded September 4, 2015. I'm reminded of the Chinese using clips from Top Gun for their recruiting video.

Plus this is the age of laser rangefinders, fire control computers, and 4000+ yard ranges. Coax spotting is both unnecessary and uncharacteristic of main guns.

At least one of the crews was +1, motivation was somewhere in the middle because I remember tweaking it from something low. I apologize for not having better details because I tend to not go too far into these for quick battles (this was a spontaneous real time one with a friend). We both saw it happen though and it was unexpected for him and annoying for me. Even with low motivation levels I cannot fathom a tank crew bailing out of a vehicle they presumably know is fully functional. Retreating in it, yes, but they bailed out under fire.

Because it was my tank, I was watching it happen with the subsytems tab open. I can assure you when they bailed it was a fully functional vehicle.

Had a couple interesting experiences with the fell beast last night. On two seperate occasions they got the jump on a T-72B3 (APS) of mine, from the front at ~3-500m. Not too surprising with the optics, but what surprised me most happened next. Both Bradleys hammered their respective T-72s with 25mm fire to the front hull. While causing no penetrations or damage to subsystems, in BOTH cases the sustained fire of 15-20 seconds was enough to cause the crews to bail out of their perfectly good vehicles and panic. You can imagine how good of an idea that was for them. I don't remember the exact details or have the save handy, but these crews weren't bottom of the barrel guys. By comparison, their platoon leaders tank took a full sustained minute of 25mm from all directions at close range (his gun was out, we were drunk, and the battle was pretty decided at this point so we tried it out). Plenty of penetrations, stripped the subsytems, but they stayed in their vehicle. Does anyone know why my two crews acted how they did? I mean I understand the whole "men under fire do odd things" but for the life of me I couldn't imagine your average Russian soldier would want to bail out of a seemingly perfectly good tank under autocannon fire to his thickest armor.

That still makes it seem like rarity should be upped rather than price, with both US and especially Russia.

Thing is with video games, there are niche markets within gaming, but as a whole exposure leads to sales. Cool screenshots and/or a gameplay trailer will definitely draw attention and subsequently sales. The problem is right now if you're not already looking for Combat Mission, I don't think you'll find it. I can't remember how I even came across CMSF.

The original statement was "people do dumb things" but this is now wildly off topic.

Its not false. The guy taking the photo is the one caught. His friends presumably went back for the camera or had one around, either is totally plausible, even in the 90s.

Just because it's put on a file in the Red Army archives doesn't mean those are accessible online, especially from the 60s. I think we all agree that the story is much more widespread proportionally than the actual number of incidences, but I'm sure there were a couple conscripts seriously injured by it. And yeah it would almost certainly be the crew's fault moreso than the design (unless they designed a separate claw to grab arms of non-believers), but it's much easier to design a safety guard than to deal with idiots most of the time. I've been in an Abrams and peered inside a T-72. The Abrams is much roomier. Even in the space, I would still be initially unnerved sitting as close to the breach having seen the videos of how far back it kicks. As for the napper, that occurred at sea so I sincerely doubt he was sleeping off a hard night. If that had been a British Carrier, might have been more likely